Food Tours Across Toronto

FULL DAY: Food, Well-Being, and Indigeneity

Date: Friday May 26, 2017

Cost: $ 80/person, includes TTC day pass **LUNCH NOT PROVIDED**

Mode: Public transit and walking

Walking difficulty: Moderate, mostly along streets

Duration: approx. 9 am – 5 pm

Stops include: Native Child and Family Services, Four Winds Indigenous Health and Well-Being Program, University of Toronto via First Story – lunch stop at Nish Dish

Led by a Rivers Rising Ambassador on Toronto’s Lost Rivers, learn about the place of food in Indigenous culture and history and its current presence and representation in Toronto. With emphasis on taking care of the future by acknowledging the past and growing with the present, this tour showcases the rich Indigenous traditions in promoting connections to food, well-being, and building communities, while capturing stories of where treaties, rights, and colonialism intersect. You will visit a beautiful sweatlodge on a rooftop in the heart of downtown; learn about community, healing and connecting in an Indigenous Program housed in a non-Indigenous organization. At University of Toronto, you will be joined by First Story, who will take you through burial grounds, and medicine gardens. You will be given the opportunity to purchase lunch at a First Nations marketeria while learning about Indigenous traditions, with food and business in Toronto. Tour organized by Toronto Urban Growers, with honorable mentions to First Story and Rivers Rising.

HALF DAY: Urban Agriculture in Downtown East

Date: Saturday May 27, 2017

Cost: $ 30/person, **lunch NOT included**

Mode: Walking tour

Walking difficulty: Moderate, mostly along streets

Duration: HALF DAY 3b – approx. 1:30 pm – 6 pm

Stops include: Allan Gardens, Growing Kids School Garden, Regent Park area, Moss Park

Gardening cuts across all ages and cultures. Toronto’s densely mixed population in downtown east is occupied by two city wards (27 and 28), home to North America’s largest social housing districts in the middle of multi-million-dollar homes. This area is also adjacent to the central and busiest hub of downtown – Yonge and Dundas. This walking tour reveals the diversity in urban agricultural methods, stakeholders involved, organizations partnering, as a means to bring respect for nature, and for community connections. This tour explores public and school engagement showcasing a historic conservatory, and creative uses of vacant spaces with milk crates, and hands-on school programming. You will also get the opportunity to delve into the radical transformation and revitalization of Regent Park, and the projects and programs that have sprouted as a response to address the vulnerable population, animate the space, and build community engagement. A final stop in Moss Park, a nearby high-rise social housing area, is also planned. Tour organized by Toronto Urban Growers.